“To all people of the Soviet Union! Today, at 4 a.m., the German
armed forces attacked the Soviet border without declaration of war. The
Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against the Nazi occupants broke
out”.
This announcement by the Soviet government came out on the first day of
the war. News of the war was broadcast in nearly 20 foreign languages.
On June 22, 1941, Radio Moscow for the first time addressed its listeners
in Norwegian, Turkish and Polish.
Soon the bombardments of Moscow began. The studios had to be relocated
to the basement, which served as a bomb shelter. In case of an air attack
all radio employees were supposed to gather in the basement. But working
there was next to impossible for stuffiness and lack of fresh air, so many
stayed in their offices paying no attention to the sirens. It was the brave
ones who witnessed an event that took place on July 22, 1941. Joe  Adamov,
a Foreign Service veteran, recalls: “Once a bomb fell into the yard of
Radio Moscow, and the German radio announced that they had put an end to
Radio Moscow once and for all. But Radio Moscow, in all its languages,
went on the air peacefully the very next morning. The bomb fell into the
huge well that was in the yard of Radio Moscow and did not explode. When
the sappers came and defused it, they found a note inside the bomb: “We
help with what we can”. In other words, it was the Resistance movement
of the Germans inside Germany, and they were making bombs that did not
explode”.
After that most of the radio employees were evacuated deep into the country.
By October 1941 corridors of the radio service headquarters were almost
empty. Reports from the fronts left little optimism. But the broadcasting
never stopped, not even for a day.
Leizor Sigan, Head of the Polish Service, came to work for the radio in
the wartime years. “The war raged on the air just as it did on the fronts”,
he said. “A curfew was on, and workers of the broadcasting services were
not allowed out when they finished work late. Those who stayed overnight
had a special room with cookers where they cooked cereals and made tea
if there was any. Radio premises had turned into barracks.
On November 7, 1941, during the decisive Battle of Moscow, Radio Moscow
broadcast a report of the parade of Soviet troops on Red Square. Soldiers
left for the fronts right from the parade. A Radio Moscow listener, Rula
Kukkulu, recalled afterwards the anxiety of members of Greek Resistance
as they listened to the report. The next morning Resistance members circulated
leaflets saying “Moscow will never surrender”. Iindeed, December
1941 marked a crucial turn in the course of the battle.
“Soviet troops have regained control of more than 400 towns and villages
after launching an offensive from December 6 through 10”.
Unfortunately, none of the programs of those days have survived. But, undoubtedly,
the tone of that report was as solemn in all 23 foreign languages that
Radio Moscow was broadcasting then.
Recollections from radio veterans reveal many funny episodes. Just like
this one, retold by Joe Adamov: “After we used to finish, The French came
to our studio. We had a knob that used to switch the microphone on and
all, and then there was a sign up there. If it said, “You’re on the air”,
that meant the transmitters were working. The people who came into the
studio before the French did not switch the microphone off, and, when the
French walked into the studio, one said to the other (they didn’t have
separate apartments in those days, they used to share one big room): “There’re
so many bed-bugs, we don’t know what to do”. And all this went on the air!
After the war, when a group of French communists came to the Soviet radio,
they were received by the Chairman of the State Committee on Radio, and
they told him that they heard this business about the bed-bugs on the air.
This sort of fortified them, gave them faith in the victory of the Red
Army, because, if the bed-bugs interested them more than the Germans who
were at the gates of Moscow, that meant that the Red Army and the Soviet
Union were standing fast and will win”.
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